Thursday, September 7, 2017

Get your curiosity on! -- Sept. 7, 2017 column

By MARSHA
MERCER

About 2,500
book lovers erupted in sustained applause when author David McCullough talked
about a mantel in the White House. But this was no ordinary hunk of cold marble.

The audience
at the National Book Festival in the Washington Convention Center Sept. 2 applauded
the hopeful words inscribed in the mantelpiece:
“May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”

McCullough was
doing what he’s done for half a century: telling America’s stories so we will
remember who we are as a people and the values we share.

He explained
that John Adams, the first president to live in the White House, wrote the sentence
in a letter to his wife, Abigail. Franklin Roosevelt had the words carved into
a wooden mantel in the State Dining Room, and John Kennedy later had them
carved in marble so they’d last forever.

The redoubtable
McCullough, a vigorous 84, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book
Awards and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian
honor, didn’t utter the name Donald Trump. He didn’t need to.

The audience
also applauded warmly when he said, again without the name, “None of our great
presidents has ever been one who didn’t have any interest in history.”

Trump proudly
says he doesn’t read books – history, biographies of presidents or anything
else – because he’s so busy. Besides, his brain is so big he doesn’t need to
read. He reaches the right decisions because he has a lot of common sense, he
says.

With the
help of ghostwriters, Trump has published about 10 books, mostly about his business
acumen and success.

Not every
president has been an intellectual, and some readers and deep thinkers in the
White House have been accused of dithering instead of acting. During the
campaign, McCullough was among historians who warned voters that the vulgarian Trump
was a clown, unsuited for the job.

Pulling back
from direct criticism of the sitting president, McCullough now reminds people of
the strain of intellectual curiosity that has run through the White House:

John Quincy
Adams spoke many languages and may have had the highest IQ of any president. Jefferson
was a genius in many fields. The brilliant Theodore Roosevelt wrote many books,
including a definitive history of the Naval War of 1812.

Woodrow
Wilson was a professor of history at Princeton. Dwight Eisenhower himself wrote
every word of “Crusade in Europe,” a classic about World War II, without the
help of any ghostwriter.

McCullough,
who won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for biography for “Truman,” praises Harry
Truman, who lacked a college degree but loved to read, including Latin.

John F.
Kennedy wrote three books of history, including “Profiles in Courage,” which is
still read.

“Curiosity
is what separates us from the cabbages” is one of McCullough’s favorite lines. But
our educational system is letting us down.

“We are raising
several generations of young Americans…who are by and large historically
illiterate, and it’s not their fault,” he said. “We have to stimulate
curiosity.”

McCullough’s
latest book, “The American Spirit,” is a collection of speeches he’s given around
the country over the years. He wrote it mindful
of Trump, but it’s aimed at helping readers gain perspective.

At an
immigration and naturalization ceremony at Monticello July 4, 1994, McCullough
said Thomas Jefferson “was an exceedingly gifted and very great man, but like
the others of that exceptional handful of politicians we call the Founding
Fathers, he could also be inconsistent, contradictory, human.”

So Jefferson
wasn’t perfect, but his “absolute belief in education” is part of his lasting legacy.
Jefferson “said any nation that expects to be ignorant and free . . . never has
been and never will be,” McCullough said.

For many of
us, the start of the school year feels like New Year’s without the hangover.
Fall is a time of possibilities and a second stab at resolutions.

No matter
our politics, it’s time to rev up the curiosity that separates us from
cabbages. What are you reading this fall?